Why is Zeta Ophiuchi so special? It’s a runaway star, traveling at a breakneck speed of 87,000 kilometers per hour (or 24 kilometers per second). And how did it get accelerated to that speed? After all, stars don’t just careen around the galaxy — eventually being ejected from the Milky Way all together — for no reason.

The massive Zeta Ophiuchi probably used to have an even larger binary partner that exploded as a supernova.

At the moment of detonation, it’s orbital momentum shot it off into space at high speed.